New digital educational Gaming for 16 and 17 year olds
The Challenge
To explore game-style experiences for NCS, we aimed to identify the most engaging ideas for young people, understand their learning goals, and discover their preferred learning styles.
My role
I designed and built sample platform and 3D driving games as inspiration pieces for a co-creation workshop. I developed mock app download screens and ran online surveys to quantitatively rank concept appeal and learning potential, then presented high-fidelity mockups to participants.
Over 300 young people aged 16–17 took part. The concept “Escape Your Room” emerged as the most appealing and impactful – both engaging and educational. I translated survey insights into storyboards, visual mockups, and an interactive demo prototype to gather deeper qualitative feedback directly from the target audience.
Solution and IMPACT
We explored gaming as a tool for learning because it offers immersive storytelling, active problem-solving, and the ability to foster empathy through experience.
Feedback for the final “Jo Escapes / Escape Your Room” concept included comments such as:
This is a very unique and interesting approach to learning, not only is it educational but it is also fun.
Quantitative results: 61% found the idea appealing, 60% said they were likely or very likely to learn something, 58% said they would find using it enjoyable. The concept was later adopted by NCS as the foundation for a digital gaming experience within their core program.
Depth of technology
The prototypes were built using JavaScript, Canvas, and Three.js, with AI-generated assets via DALL·E and UI rendered in Figma. The final interactive demo was created in Figma to simulate core gameplay and user interactions.
